Faced with what they're calling a "broken" system, a band of Senate Democratic newcomers are vowing to change the way the world's greatest deliberative body does business. These "young turks" -- "young" being relative in a body in which 60 is considered middle-aged -- are pushing to revamp the decades-old rules that govern the Senate.
Their targets include long-held senatorial courtesies such as the "hold" and the seniority system that awards chairmen's gavels solely on tenure. Ultimately, some want to modify or eliminate the most potent of all senatorial weapons: the filibuster.
Some of the older Senators don't like it:
Calling the newcomers' approach "grossly misguided," Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), who is 92 and the longest-serving lawmaker in the history of Congress, said the Senate is designed to protect the rights of all, not just those who won the last election.
"Extended deliberation and debate -- when employed judiciously -- protect every senator, and the interest of their constituency, and are essential to the protection of the liberties of a free people," Byrd, who was first elected in 1958, wrote in a letter to colleagues last month.
Somehow, these objections from Robert Byrd--who is actually favoring filibuster reform even as he objects to it--are not persuading younger Senators. Democratic Senators who first entered the senate after the 2006 or 2008 elections are holding meetings, as a group, on how to change the rules. While we don't know who has attended, and what has been discussed at, these meetings, freshman Maryland Senator Ben Cardin confirms the meetings have frequently taken place:
"I think the Senate needs to operate more fairly and efficiently than it does today," said Sen. Ben Cardin (Md.), a Democrat elected in 2006.
"We've had frequent discussions between our two classes as to ways we think we can add to traditions of the Senate and make sure we get our work done," said Cardin.
Among Senators not included in the most recent update to the filibuster reform vote count, at least Ben Cardin, Debbie Stabenow, and Mark Warner appear to be involved in these discussions. That pushes the number of Senators publicly favoring, or at least considering, some sort of filibuster reform to at least 25, and as many as 30. The full details of the count can be seen in the extended entry.
At this point, at long as Democrats maintain control of the Senate in 2011, the question no longer seems to be "if" there will be procedural reform, but what sort of reform will happen. Even though I have only been about to find 30 public statements in favor of reform, there are probably a lot more than 25-30 Democratic Senators in the reform camp, given the following four factors:
All potential Democratic Majority Leaders (Durbin, Reid and Schumer) have endorsed "some sort" of reform (although Durbin favors a 51-vote Senate);
Freshman Dems are frequently meeting to try and hash out some sort of reform but only 10 of the 22 freshman have made it known publicly that they are involved in these discussions;
Even those opposed to eliminating the filibuster, such as Feingold and Byrd, are still in favor of ending the "painless" filibuster and forcing talk-a-thons;
There really isn't any public group of Democratic Senators coherently arguing against changing Senate procedural rules. The question isn't if reform will happen, but rather what shape reform will take.
Americans don't know what to think about climate change anymore. A few years ago, the public more or less trusted the science that said human activity was raising global temperatures, but now that Congress and the Obama administration have hemmed and hawed about climate issues, we're not longer so sure.
Forty-eight percent of Americans-more of us than ever before-believe that reports of global warming are "generally exaggerated," according to a new Gallup poll. Climate science hasn't changed, so it's not crazy to look at these numbers and think that conservatives' incessant critiques of climate change may be working.
A perfect political storm
These shifts in opinion started around 2008. Aaron Wiener at the Washington Independent argues that the politics of climate change are driving American opinions about the reality of global warming. The percentage of Americans willing to put the blame for climate change on humans is about equal to the percentage of Americans still behind President Barack Obama's agenda, he notes.
"What was once a broad moral and scientific issue is now a centerpiece of the Democrats' legislative agenda," he writes.
Republicans have taken a political stand on climate change, too, one that reinforces the message that we can afford to ignore global warming. At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum links the Gallup numbers to confusion about Copenhagen and to negative "Climategate" stories about a few climate scientists' unprofessional emails.
But taking a wider view, Drum points out another big problem: "The Republican Party has largely decided that climate change simply doesn't exist. It's a hoax," he says.
Green xenophobia
It's also politically convenient for a party that throws a tantrum every time the president produces a policy idea. But in another corner of the right's world, conservatives are eager to defend the country's environment against the burden of immigration.
Jamilah King reports for ColorLines that Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR), which is linked to a conservative anti-immigrant group, is warning that immigration "is pushing our country deeper into ecological deficit."
King refutes this notion, citing reports that population and pollution are not directly linked. "In fact, newly arrived immigrants are probably among the most ecologically friendly folks around," she writes. "They're more likely to use public transportation and less likely to waste food."
Impacts of climate change
Conservatives who'd prefer that immigrants stay on the other side of the border would do better to worry about Republicans' studied blindness to climate change. Without action, global warming could send waves of people north, as places like Mexico grow warmer and can no longer support the same amount of agriculture.
Inter Press Service lays out some of the detrimental effects of climate change on poorer countries, particularly on the female half of the population. Women are more vulnerable to the natural disasters that accompany global warming, and the tasks that they take on, like collecting water and firewood, will grow harder as water becomes more scarce.
Overall, Thalif Deen reports, "The negative fallout from climate change is having a devastatingly lopsided impact on women compared to men."
Slow Senate progress
The Senate is trying to move forward on climate change legislation. A key group of Senators met this week at the White House with President Obama, but coming out, the legislators had only "vague observations" to share about progress, according to Mother Jones' Kate Sheppard.
Part of the problem with the Senate's process is that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) have already said that they'll likely discard the sort of cap-and-trade provisions that the House bill used to regulate carbon emissions. From an environmental point of view, the Senate is getting close to doing nothing at all.
"It's really clear that whatever attains 60 votes in the US Senate at this stage in the game is at best an extremely incremental step forward," Gillian Caldwell, campaign director at the environmental group 1Sky, told Sheppard.
The new progressive energy
The Senate seems more eager, along with President Obama, to embrace nuclear energy as a climate solution.
"I happen to be one of the Senators who's concerned about waste," Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said at a recent summit, reports TPMDC. "But most progressives in the Senate believe nuclear power is part of the solution at this time."
"If we don't expand nuclear power, there are going to be more coal plants and more oil plants," Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) added. "Nuclear power has been accepted as part of the solution [to climate change] among progressives."
Considering the political will the Senate has been able to muster behind climate legislation, one might as well believe that reports of global warming are "greatly exaggerated." After all, you'd think that if there was a potentially catastrophic threat looming in the future, our elective representatives might want to, you know, do something about that.
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Jonathan Weisman's account of Democratic approach to national security issues in the Washington Post today is worth reading in its entirety, because it shows the mindset on Capitol Hill and why we aren't making progress. The biggest problem are the Bush Dog Democrats like Allen Boyd (the only Democrat to support Social Security privatization in 2005) and Lincoln Davis, who both believe in warrantless wiretapping and use fear of Republican attacks on the issue to justify their authoritarian impulses.
But conservative Democrats and some party leaders continue to worry that taking on those issues would expose them to Republican charges that they are weak on terrorism...
Conservative Democrats, including Rep. Allen Boyd (Fla.), argued just as vociferously that Democrats dare not leave on vacation without passing the White House bill.
"The most controversial matters are the ones that people use to form their opinions on their members of Congress," said Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn.), who voted for the administration's bill. "I do know within our caucus, and justifiably so, there are members who have a real distaste for some of the things the president has done. But to let that be the driving force for our actions to block the surveillance of someone and perhaps stop another attack like 9/11 would be unwise."
Davis, in this quote, slips and slides between two different explanations. He argues that voters form their opinions based on controversial votes, and then says that the FISA vote was necessary to block another 9/11. The mixture of fear and reactionary instincts is quite revealing. The political evidence for Davis's position is thin. Bush has net negatives on his handling of terrorism, and the public is overwhelmingly opposed to warrantless wiretapping according to recent polling data. In fact, Rove and Bush made terrorism the centerpiece of their 2006 election strategy, and not one single Democratic incumbent lost.
Remember this ad against Chris Murphy, a so-called 'devastating' ad arguing that Murphy's stance against warrantless wiretapping would enable terrorists? The ad moved numbersagainst his opponent, and Murphy crushed his opponent by 12 points. It is simply ridiculous to think at this point that Republicans have an advantage on this issue. It's empirically untrue. But even if you believe the Republicans do have an advantage here, to assume that the Republicans won't run on this issue simply because you threw away civil liberties entirely ignores modern media. The GOP will run on whatever they want to run on, you can't stop them by voting for their proposals. Did Max Cleland's example mean nothing to these people? Apparently.
But it's not just Bush Dog Democrats that are the problem, it's much more pervasive than that. Here's Ben Cardin, a 'liberal' Senator from Maryland.
"If you just say you're standing up for civil liberties, the American people are with you, but if you say terrorism suspects should have civil liberties, it stretches Americans' tolerance," said Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), who along with Hastings represents Congress on the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, a human rights monitor. "It's a tough issue for us."
Among Bush Dogs, the problem is fear and slavishness to Bush. But among liberals like Cardin, it's a poll-driven adherence to conventional wisdom.
If anything, the habeas corpus and Guantanamo Bay issues will be tougher. In June, nearly 150 House Democrats signed a letter by Moran urging the shuttering of the prison. But Moran said last week that he no longer thinks he could muster the votes to pass the measure, even though the move is supported by former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. Republicans appear to have won the argument with their accusation that Democrats want to import terrorists....
"We can do this, but you have to keep in mind Republicans care more about catching Democrats than catching terrorists," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. "They have spent years taking Roosevelt's notion that we have nothing to fear but fear itself and given us nothing but fear."
The slavishness to fear and conventional wisdom, the misreading of polls and politics, and the unwillingness to lead are remarkable, among liberals like Cardin, strategists like Emanuel, and Bush Dogs like Davis and Boyd. But there's there's also this.
And advocates of a strong push on the terrorism issues are increasingly skeptical that they can prevail.
"I don't think it's that we're reluctant to take on Bush," said Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (Fla.), a senior member of the House intelligence committee. "I think it's we are reluctant to take on each other. . . . If I can fast-forward to September, October, November, December and see where we'll be, we'll be nowhere."
Congress is pretty small, with a little over 500 people. They get along with each other, they are 'office-mates' in some sense, they play basketball together, and they are in many cases friends. Public criticism from a Democrat to another Democrat is quite rare, because it ruins these relationships and makes it personally harder and more lonely to be in Congress. That's actually how you can tell that Brian Baird's 'the surge is working' is quite costly to him, because a fellow House member, Ellen Taucsher, is openly scornful of Baird's judgment.
Building a different set of incentives for decision-makers is going to take a lot of work. The problem is a mixture of conventional wisdom, poor judgment, bad values, a lack of coordination with activists by progressive members, and inertia. Fortunately, the ACLU is now getting very aggressive against Democrats, Nancy Pelosi is showing a harder line, Moveon is cracking down on people like Baird, local activists are becoming much less tolerant of flouting our values, and we're starting the criticism necessary to identify and fix the problem.
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